This paper proposes a novel multimodal interactive surgical simulator that incorporates haptic, olfactory, as well as traditional vision feedback. A scent diffuser was developed to produce odors when errors occur. Haptic device was used to provide the sense of touch to the user. The preliminary results show that adding smell as an aid to the simulation enhanced the memory retention that lead to...

This study characterizes the foraging activity of the queenless ant Dinoponera quadriceps (Kempf) (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in its natural environment by testing the hypotheses that foraging activity presents both daily and seasonal rhythmic variations, and that these rhythms are related to environmental variables. Four colonies of D. quadriceps were observed in an area of secondary Atlantic fo...

Bottlenose dolphins use a variety of foraging specializations to detect and pursue prey. Like other mammals, individual dolphins may use specialized foraging techniques that are shaped in response to habitat or particular prey resources. The long duration of the mother-calf bond presents an opportunity for mothers to transmit such specializations to their calves, and cases of observational lear...

Foraging on resources that are fixed in space but that replenish over time, such as floral nectar and pollen, presents animals with the problem of selecting a foraging route. What can flower visitors such as bees do to optimize their foraging routes, that is, reduce return time or route distance? Some repeatedly visit a set of plants in a significantly predictable sequence (so-called ‘‘trapline...

Optimization algorithms are search methods where the goal is to find an optimal solution to a problem, in order to satisfy one or more objective functions, possibly subject to a set of constraints. Studies of social animals and social insects have resulted in a number of computational models of swarm intelligence. Within these swarms their collective behavior is usually very complex. The collec...

We describe our conversion of a simulation of the seed foraging behavior of the ant species P. barbatus to a generative art technique for creating ant paintings. We also show how the key parameters involved influence the results.

Increased housing of wild nonhuman animals in captivity for conservation, research, and rehabilitation has revealed the importance of systematically analyzing effects of the captive environment on behavior. This study focused on the effects of complexity and time held in captivity on foraging behaviors of wild-caught, adult meadow voles (Microtus pennsylvanicus). Forty-six individuals captured ...

Online navigation is often considered to be an enjoyable activity, and users often use lighthearted terms about that activity, such as “surfing” and “cruising” the Web. Unfortunately, there is indeed a dark side to online navigation, with many users becoming lost among unfamiliar terms and suffering long delays. In this research-in-progress study we describe our experimental examination of two ...

Collective behavior is produced by interactions among individuals. Differences among groups in individual response to interactions can lead to ecologically important variation among groups in collective behavior. Here we examine variation among colonies in the foraging behavior of the harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex barbatus. Previous work shows how colonies regulate foraging in response to food av...

Foraging is a benchmark problem in robotics especially for distributed autonomous robotic systems. The systematic study of robot foraging is important for several reasons: firstly, because foraging is a metaphor for the broad class of problems integrating robotic exploration, navigation and object identification, manipulation and transport; secondly, in multi-robot systems foraging is a canonic...